Holyrood thief's £50,000 on calls

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/scotland/6182090.stm

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A £50,000 bill has been run up on a Scottish Parliament mobile phone after it was stolen more than two years ago.

It went missing during the move to Holyrood in 2004, but the theft was not discovered until April this year, when the supplier warned of "excessive use".

A charge of £43,200 plus VAT, a total of £50,525, was run up by the new user's repeated calls to premium rate competition lines.

The phone supplier has agreed to write off about 50% of the charges.

The revelation came in a report by Holyrood's watchdog, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body (SPCB).

It stated: "In accordance with the SPCB's fraud response plan, the head of internal audit conducted a full investigation of this loss.

"The matter was also lodged with the police for investigation."

Alert system

The SPCB said the phone was a general parliamentary staff mobile used infrequently by different people.

It was taken from a desk drawer in the parliament's temporary accommodation at George IV Bridge in Edinburgh.

A Scottish Parliament spokesman said new measures had now been adopted to "strengthen guidance and procedures" for mobile phone ownership and use.

These include checking quarterly bills against the phones' users and asking users to identify and pay for any non-business calls.

The mobile firm is now piloting an alert system that will notify the parliament if any of its phones run up a bill over a "normal" threshold.

Lothian and Borders Police confirmed it was investigating the theft.